Latest Articles
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Cotton a Trap
GM cotton doesn’t cut pesticide use long term, new research indicates Biotech giant Monsanto touts its genetically modified cotton seed — spliced with the bollworm-killing Bt toxin — as money- and earth-saving, because it lowers the need for pesticide use. Funny story about that: a new study found that cotton farmers using the seed soon […]
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Learning to love Wal-Mart
We've done some good stuff on Wal-Mart's greening, but Marc Gunther's cover story in Fortune this week pulls it all together better than any single story I've seen, and advances it in some interesting ways.
Particularly in reference to our ongoing debate over morality, listen to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott:
To me, there can't be anything good about putting all these chemicals in the air. There can't be anything good about the smog you see in cities. There can't be anything good about putting chemicals in these rivers in Third World countries so that somebody can buy an item for less money in a developed country. Those things are just inherently wrong, whether you are an environmentalist or not.
He later says:
I had an intellectual interest when we started. I have a passion today.
What moved him from intellectual interest to passion? Morality.
I hadn't realized how big a role a Walton played in the story. This line sounds like the beginning of a joke:
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freecycle: TM, and R.I.P.
I've got a funny story for you. Here's a preview of the punchline: freecycle, once a clever, idealistic way to prevent material from entering landfills, has been made by its leadership into a clown show.
Some background.
Way back in May 2004, we did a (glowing) story on the new freecycling movement, whereby people give stuff away rather than throwing it away, via internet-based networks.
Roughly a year later, in May 2005, we did a follow-up story about freecycle's growing pains. Freecycle founder and executive director Deron Beal had accepted corporate sponsorship, attempted to secure a trademark on the freecycle name, and started exercising what some group moderators saw as dictatorial control over regional and local freecycle networks.
In Gristmill, there was a looong and heated debate over the article. Looong. And heated.
Shortly thereafter, Grist received a letter from the freecycle media relations people, urging us in unctuous tones to always capitalize the word "freecycle," never use such bastardized constructions as "freecycler" or "freecycling," and always use the trademark symbol when referring to the entity as a whole: The Freecycle NetworkTM. The letter deserved, and received, mockery.
But tinpot tycoons can never get enough mockery. Which brings us to the present.
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Bombing yields massive oil spill off Lebanon beaches
The Mother Jones blog has a bit of a scoop, plucked from the Arabic-language press:
It looks like an eco-nightmare is taking place on the beaches of Lebanon. Reports coming in say beaches are being clogged with oil because five out of six oil tanks at the electricity plant in Jiyeh were destroyed by Israeli bombs.
The Lebanese Embassy in Washington confirmed the spill. -
Obama leads bipartisan effort to raise fuel-economy standards
Is the sting of $75-a-barrel oil and the threat of World War III exploding in the Middle East enough to convince Congress to finally boost auto fuel economy? Probably not, but a bipartisan coalition of senators led by Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is launching an admirable new effort anyway — the Fuel Economy Reform Act. Barack […]
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Just my imagination, once again…
Greenpeace is not having much luck catching illegal tuna fishermen because the fishermen are are not having much luck catching any tuna. However, you can bet they will continue to try as long as the Japanese are willing to pay $50,000 for a single large adult bluefin. You wouldn't think that one or two trips to the local sushi bar a year would help drive tuna to extinction, but that's how it works. Our biodiversity is dying a death from 6.5 billion tiny cuts. This is also why harping at consumers has such limited success. The good news is that this will free up Greenpeace resources to shadow other boats in other waters until whatever they are fishing for goes extinct. What if our Navy, instead of wandering around killing whales and dolphins with their sonar, were to spend some of their free time helping Greenpeace enforce fishing bans?
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Umbra on fridge-freezer efficiency
Dear Umbra, Are there any environmental advantages to the refrigerators with the freezer on the bottom and the fridge on the top? Annette Indianapolis, Ind. Dearest Annette, There are three fridge/freezer configurations: side by side, bottom freezer, and top freezer. In models with comparable storage volume, the least efficient is the side by side. Top […]
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Songbirds show high mercury levels
Conservation groups have spent the last few years fighting to make sure that FDA warnings about mercury are actually shared with consumers -- and we're starting to have some real success getting the message out. Many consumers, especially expecting mothers, now know about these warnings and are closely monitoring which -- and how much -- seafood they eat in a given week to avoid mercury contamination. But as The New York Times reports, a recent study shows that mercury has spread further than previously thought.
This "eye-opening" study tested songbirds in New York and found that every one had elevated levels of mercury -- meaning that mercury is now literally finding its way into our back yards.
